Installation of BI Publisher on OEL5 and BIP Desktop on Windows Vista

-- Update: This post remained in my drafts folder (for one month now), I guess I wanted to include something else, but I don't know what anymore, so I decided to post it as is...

As I blogged a few days ago, I created a VM with my Oracle soft. Now I'm extending my demo system with BI Publisher. So far, so good, wasn't it I also need Oracle BI Publisher Desktop, and that runs on Windows. I could have gone for another VM for only that, which would be the most secure thing as it would be a "fixed" working environment (without the windows updates etc.).

Nevertheless, I didn't do that, as my systems RAM is going bananas! Windows Vista is already eating 1GB of my RAM, the other 1GB I use for my VMware. So no room left for another VM with Windows.

As I'm giving a presentation at OOW and UKOUG about the integration of APEX and BI Publisher and creating some advanced pdf's, next thing for me to do ... install BIP!

When I'm talking about Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BIP), I'm talking about a server part, in my case BI Publisher 10.1.3.3.1 for Linux and a client part, BI Publisher Desktop 10.1.3.3.1 for Windows.

Installation of BI Publisher 10.1.3.3.1 in OEL5 (Oracle Enterprise Linux 5)

Installing BIP in Windows is a matter of minutes, click on the installation file and that's basically it. I hoped it would be as easy in Linux, but ...

After downloading BIP for Linux, I read the manual. There're not that many pre-requisites, so I started with "./runInstaller".

What followed was a nice java error thrown by the OUI (Oracle Universal Installer).
When you think you've all needed libraries installed, there's for an odd reason always one more! In my case I had to install the libXp-1.0.0-8.i386.rpm package to get the installation of BIP running.

So these are the steps I followed to install BIP (server) in OEL5

1. Start a Terminal
2. Install the required library: rpm -Uvh libXp-1.0.0-8.i386.rpm (you find the rpm on CD2 of OEL5)
3. Download BI Publisher
4. Extract the file: cpio -idmv < (the downloaded file)
5. Do a Basic Installation of BIP: ./runInstaller
6. Go for the defaults, which means you get a proper oc4j for your BI Publisher
7. To configure your APEX with BI Publisher you may want to read my previous blog post.
   Be sure you did all pre and post installations for your DB and BIP.

Installation of BI Publisher Desktop 10.1.3.3.1 in Windows Vista

Installing software to demo on your daily OS, isn't maybe the smartest thing to do, but I already explained why I'm still doing it. Let's hope my settings will still be good at OOW ;-)

1. Download and install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 3
2. Download and install Oracle BI Publisher Desktop
3. You may want to read this before installing BIP Desktop on Vista.
   I went for all default settings.
4. In MS Word you'll see the BIP Add-in (see screenshot)
   

Quest Toad on Oracle 11g not supported

Are you already on Oracle Database 11g? If you're not, it's really cool ;-)

Nevertheless, this post is to warn all developers out there using Quest TOAD for Oracle.
The current release of TOAD is 9.1, this version is not supported with Oracle 11g (client). But even more important, the version that comes out half of November, TOAD 9.5 (see screenshot below which is a beta), isn't working with the Oracle 11g client neither!

I logged a support ticket at Quest. The support over there is really quick and helpful. In less than a day I got a message back that they were going to try it themselves, it went even to the technical people (development team) and after a few mails of back and for I got this final message: "Unfortunately, it was confirmed by our team's technical lead that Toad version 9.5 only support Oracle server 11g and not Oracle client 11g. My only suggestion for you is to install another client on your machine that is 10gR2 version or lower."

It's hard to believe that you need to install an Oracle Server just to get your development environment (TOAD) running ;-) Nevertheless, a workaround is to install Oracle 10g client, which I don't want to do as I'm connecting to 11g databases.
Or go for SQL Developer, a free alternative of Oracle.

A screenshot of the error "OCI version 11.1.0.1.0 is not supported"

I'm using both SQL Developer and TOAD as I think both have strengths and points to improve.
This post isn't to favor for SQL Developer, it's just to warn you... on my Windows Vista pc I'm obliged to go for SQL Developer as TOAD is not working with my Oracle 11g client.

My demo system: VMware 6 + OEL5 + Oracle DB 11g

It took me longer to install my demo system as I thought. So be warned when doing this yourself.

My current laptop is a Dell Latitude D820 with 2GB of RAM running a dual boot: Windows XP and Vista. Before I used Windows XP as my demo system, but with the service packs and other installation of software which can interfere with my Oracle config it was too risky to keep it as non-fail demo system. I also wanted to use Windows Vista, but on that, the Oracle database is not supported. Update: according to this it's supported on Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions.

So I thought to start using VMware images as demo system. I already tried it in the past (the Oracle VM's) but found it too slow, so I was sceptic about it. But I must admit, it's running fine at the moment.

The time I started with my VM's, Oracle DB 11g for Windows wasn't even out, so I choose for Oracle Enterprice Linux 5 (OEL5). Oracle is putting a lot of effort in linux and using it as their "main" development platform, so most of the soft should come out first for this operating system.

I first used VMware Server (free) to install OEL5, which did work. But when playing with linux and trying to get my network working, I just had one problem after another.
I couldn't understand why it failed, so I tried to use VMware Workstation (not free), which I was sure was supported for Windows Vista. After 5 minutes everything worked.

Tip: When using Windows Vista use VMware Workstation 6 or higher!

The steps I did to get my demo system up and running.

Create a new VMware machine

1. Select "New Virtual Machine" from VMware to create the hardware specification
2. Go for a Custom virtual machine configuration - Linux - Linux kernel 2.6.x
3. I used 1GB Ram, 20GB diskspace, a cd-rom and bridged ethernet
4. Go with the defaults of the wizard

Install Oracle Enterprise Linux 5

1. Download Oracle Enterprice Linux from OTN
2. Unzip the file, you should get 5 iso images
3. Mount the first cd in your VMware console (Edit virtual machine settings - connection - use iso image)
4. Start the Virtual Machine
5. If everything is fine, it will boot the OEL5 cd and will start the wizard for the installation
6. I used most of the default settings during the installation
7. Use a static IP address
8. Select some more packages as default (Customize software packages to be installed) for ex.: Legacy Software Development, Graphical Internet, Development Tools, System Tools
9. During the installation you'll need to change the cd's (right click on the cd in VMware, Edit and select the other cd)
10. Reboot the system and finalize the installation

Configure your linux

1. I had to change the monitor to be able to get a higher resolution
2. You can also opt to install the VMware Tools which give you some more features
   (I had some problems with these tools as they changed my network settings)
3. If you prefer to change your shell (for ex. bash instead of ksh), you can do that by using: "chsh". You need to logout and login again so the settings are applied.

Install Oracle Database 11g

1. Read the installation guide (!). Even the most experienced people sometimes forget to read the installation manual. Something can change in time, the system requirements change, ...
2. Especially in linux you need to review your kernel parameters and required packages.
   Some of the packages that weren't installed as default, for ex.: libaio-devel-0.3.105-2, unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-1. You find most of the required packages on CD2 and CD3.
   You can use the "rpm -Uvh" command to get them installed.
3. Create users and groups:
   # groupadd -g 501 oinstall
   # groupadd -g 502 dba
   # useradd -g oinstall -G dba -s /bin/ksh oracle
   # passwd oracle
4. Append the following to the /etc/sysctl.conf file as the root user and run /sbin/sysctl –p (this command makes the settings immediately applied):
   kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
   kernel.shmmax = 536870912
   net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
   net.core.rmem_default = 4194304
   net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
   net.core.wmem_default = 262144
   net.core.wmem_max = 262144
5. The Oracle Universal Installer will verify the requirements, if they are not met you'll get a warning. Before going further, you should review the failed items and resolve the issues.
   Do retry and if all steps are passed successfully, you can start the installation.
6. I did a normal Enterprise Edition install with the preconfigured database.
7. You may also check your environment variables (for ex. in /home/oracle/.bash_profile) for the oracle user ($ORACLE_HOME, $PATH, $ORACLE_SID etc.) Make also sure you include the Oracle bin directory in your PATH (export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin) so you can run commands from everywhere.

Configure Oracle Application Express (APEX)

1. To configure APEX you can follow the instruction in the Postinstallation tasks
2. Before, I always used Apache as my webserver for APEX, but now I thought to go for the embedded PL/SQL gateway
3. As most of you know, with 11g APEX is preinstalled ;-) The installation is made so easy!
4. Open a terminal and go to $ORACLE_HOME/apex
5. Connect with SQL*Plus as sysdba and run @apxconf
6. It will ask you for the port of the Oracle XML DB HTTP server. I'm not sure 8080 (default) is a great port to use as it's sometimes in conflict with other products... so I used 7779.
7. The final step is to ALTER USER ANONYMOUS ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
8. Go to your fixed ip or hostname in a browser: http://192.168.2.150:7779/apex/
9. The first time can take some time, but you should see APEX coming up
   

Tip: Read the manuals!

Some screenshots of my system


If you want to read how to install something like above but in Rac, Frederik (Frikkie) Visser wrote a very good article.

That was basically what I did to create my demo system. During this process, I sometimes "cursed" my machine. John Scott was very supportive, but also teased me more than once with "get a Mac"! We'll see ;-)

Use of 11g functionalities (pivot) in Windows

Yep... it's possible! Oracle Database 11g is out for Windows. You can download it here.

Already a lot others blogged about it, but as I'm more blogging about Oracle Application Express, I thought to blog into that direction for this new release...

11g brings you a lot of new features. Especially the PLSQL New Features are useful to any APEX developer. Now you know you can use it on your windows servers too.
One of the new nice things is the Pivot function...

If you want to read more about these new features (for developers), here are some nice links:

• on Oracle-Base (by Tim Hall)
• on AMIS (by Lucas Jellema & Alex Nuijten)
  

I'm not going to install Oracle DB 11g on my windows system as I'm currently creating my VM's for OOW: Oracle Enterprise Linux + Oracle Database 11g + BI Publisher. (I'll blog later the steps I did to create these VM's) I don't want my machine crashing anymore, so I'm preparing myself ;-)